(NOTE: for the next couple of months, many if not all my posts here will be cross-posts with my ongoing production blog over at sailormanshow.com)
So, the idea for Sailor Man has been gestating since at least 2002, when Scott and I started living together, just out of college. Neither of us was employed, we lived in filth … the most charitable way to describe the state of our apartment was “squalor.” We spent a lot of time getting intoxicated in the afternoon and watching TV and movies. I kept returning to [a seminal cartoon about a sailor] that repeated on Cartoon Network. I found them so silly and giddy … the product of a time when the very concept of animation was still new enough to inspire a huge amount of experimentation and awesome flights of fancy … there was a true “hey, look guys! We can do ANYTHING. It’s Animation!” feeling to every one of the cartoons. I enjoyed the hell out of them. But, for maybe the first time I was really struck by how violent cartoons are, and this cartoon in particular. Somehow, when it’s an anthropomorphic rabbit or a coyote getting smashed, punched, or mangled, it seems more fantastic than when it’s two human beings going at each other. And while I still found these sailor cartoons fantastical, I couldn’t help but be a little intrigued that the ostensible hero of the show’s solution to literally EVERYTHING is to punch it. Hell, there’s an episode where he’s minding someone’s baby, and he beats up an entire orchestra and an intersection full of motorists because the noise they make threatens to wake the infant. (Amazingly, he manages NOT to punch the baby.)
So, it occurred to me that without the “cartoonyness” of these old cartoons, the stories about this pugnacious sailor are actually pretty ugly, pretty brutal. And so, the concept for Sailor Man was born.
Now, even though we’d had this idea for years, it wasn’t until this year that we finally decided to really do something about it. In late December ’07, with the submission deadline for the New York International Fringe Festival in February, I started the long and ongoing journey to physically become that sailor. I’ve always had the chin for it. No question. The issue was that in December I weighed about 185 lbs. That’s not obese, but it’s overweight for my 5’10” frame. Something I’m not too proud of.
[Ry BEFORE. AFTER pic pending.]
I cut two of my very favorite things from my diet: Pizza and French fries. Pizza wasn’t so hard, but fries … there is no food I take more satisfaction from than a hot plate of fries. I still indulge from time to time, but I used to have French fries about once a day at least. Jeez, do I love fries. On top of this, I bought a forearm exerciser. The kind you squeeze. The most memorable thing about that certain animated sailor is his massive forearms. Daily squeezings, plus biking everywhere I could dropped me down to 177 by late May. And although I could do more forearm squeezes than anybody I knew … so many in fact, I broke the digital counter on the machine; I was still puffy and un-muscular.
Thus, for the first time in my life, I joined a gym and began a real workout routine. Let me just say now that I hate it. I hate working out. Nothing seems more disingenuous or more indicative of the ridiculousness of our entitled human condition than people paying money to use their bodies in a void, trying desperately to work off the sumptuous food they can afford to eat too much of, and building muscles that they’d have anyway if they had to do any physical labor at all in their lives. Myself included.
But, duty called. I now do 30-40 minutes of cardio a day (plus more if I’m biking around the city) and 40 minutes of weights. Right now all the focus in on my upper body, specifically my arms. I can tone my core once I’ve dropped my gut. Until then, I just need to be thinner and more army. Especially my forearms. I spend more time on my forearms than any other musclehead at the gym. Of course, there are guys there whose forearms put mine to shame, but they also look like their only hobby is working out. I have at least 3 hobbies, so no time for that kind of dedication. But, as of this week, I weigh 171 lbs. and I can do 3 sets of 8 reps each of forearm curls with a 45 lb dumbbell. At the risk of tooting my own pipe (ha!) that’s pretty amazing. That’s the kind of strength almost no one needs in their forearms. Suffice it to say, no pickle jar will ever best me again. Now, if only my forearms actually looked like they were that strong …
Anyway, I will continue my workout regimen up until the show opens, and (probably) beyond. As Scott said in a previous post, neither he nor I have done any real acting in years, and I wanted to go at this as seriously as possible. So, I’m totally re-doing my body, DeNiro or Christian Bale style. I may have been away from the theater for a while, but who says I ain’t method?
